What Does 1 Chronicles 10:6 Mean?
So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died together.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
So Saul died, and his three sons, and all his house died together.THE KEY
A king’s death does not stay with the king: the same word carries the ending across his whole house.
THE MEANING
The verse gives no distance between Saul and those bound to him: his sons and his whole house enter the same ending together. It speaks to the vulnerability of a household when death reaches every member at once.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a ruler’s death is only his private ending falls away here: the verse names his sons and whole house in the same event.
THE ROOT
וַיָּמָת
wayyāmāṯ
GROWS FROM
מות
to die; death
The Hebrew uses the same root first for Saul’s death and then for the house’s death, shifting from a singular verb to a plural one. English repeats “died,” while Hebrew’s shared root makes the ending sound like one fate extending from the king to his household.
ALSO GROWS
māweṯ: death
מָוֶת
This noun names the same ending that the verse expresses as an event happening to Saul and his house.
mēṯ: dead person; deceased
מֵת
This related form describes one who has reached the state the verse names for Saul and his family.
THE PATTERN
Death reaches across household bonds and social distinctions as a common human end.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you turn back to the ground, for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall turn back.All things come alike to all. There is one meeting for the aligned and for the wicked, for the good and for the clean and for the stained, for the one who slaughters and for the one who does not slaughter. As the good is, so is the one who misses the mark. The one who swears is like the one who fears an oath.And as it is laid up for people to die once, and after this, judgment.THE THREAD
The fathers shall not be put to death for the sons, nor the sons for the fathers; each man shall be put to death for his own falling short.Both verses use מות (mûṯ, “to die”). Here the deaths gather a whole household together; Deuteronomy uses the same root to mark a boundary: guilt does not pass from parent to child.
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